


Thanks For Ruining My Hockey Night In Ithaca

by lanyon



Category: The Iliad - Homer
Genre: AU: Hockey, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 14:02:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2853425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s one of the biggest rivalries in the NHL; the Achaeans versus the Trojans and everyone expects this to go the full seven. Shade has been thrown at every level, from the GMs to the the players’ mothers to the backroom staff. </p>
<p>The road to the cup has never run smooth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thanks For Ruining My Hockey Night In Ithaca

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caughtinanocean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caughtinanocean/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide to **caughtinanocean**.  
>  Thank you to S <3

It’s one of the biggest rivalries in the NHL; the Achaeans versus the Trojans and everyone expects this to go the full seven. Shade has been thrown at every level, from the GMs to the the players’ mothers to the backroom staff. 

The road to the cup has never run smooth.

=

**thetis** @hockeymom500 • 3h  
some hockey moms don’t have rich husbands who own hockey teams

**thetis** @hockeymom500 • 3h  
some hockey moms don’t know what it’s like to make a sacrifice for their kids

=

It is fate, of course. 

Achilles tells Patroclos that they are going to play together in the big leagues. Patroclus, helplessly, believes him, even though he’s injured. It is easy to believe Achilles when he whispers fervent promises to Patroclus in the dead of night in their billet house. 

Achilles is fourteen and Patroclus is sixteen and devout, whispering prayers to the gods of hockey, and of victory and of pride, that Achilles is right and that they will play together.

The next day, their billet dad drives them to the rink to practice. 

“Got a good pair here,” he says to the rink owner.

“You say that every year, Chiron.”

“This year, it’s the truth.”

Patroclus sits on the bench and watches Achilles skate circles around the rest of the team, who are always slow to arrive. 

=

PATROCLUS: WILL HIS DARK PAST PREVENT HIM FROM TAKING HIS PLACE AMONG THE GREATS?

Rumours follow rookies like rats behind a piper and it seems that this year’s second round pick, Patroclus, has a secret in his past that might cause the Achaeans to regret selecting him. A sealed juvenile record and a tragic accident can suggest many things, and a tattoo that says _Clysonymus_ spells trouble.

=

“I love you,” says Achilles, fiercely. He’s seventeen years old, and Patroclus is nineteen and he’s drunk for the first time. 

Achilles has been drafted first. He snuck into Patroclus’ hotel room and his mom is probably looking for him and Patroclus shouldn’t even be here, but he couldn’t stay away. 

They raid the mini-bar and Achilles kisses him feverishly. “We’re going to play together,” he says. “For ever.”

He tastes like red wine and whiskey and his lips are stained purple, and they’re plump, and Patroclus wants to bite them. 

“We can’t tell anyone,” he says. “They won’t understand.”

(He means, don’t tell your mother; she’ll never forgive me for ruining your life.)

“I _love_ you,” says Achilles, fiercely. 

=

The Achaeans’ first line is impressive. Anchored by two-way centre, Odysseus of Ithaca, with Achilles on the left and Patroclus on the right, we expect to see goals, goals, goals.

Plenty of fans say that Odysseus is too old but there’s no one who knows the game like him. 

Achaeans’ GM, Agamemnon, is taking a gamble in trusting a seventeen year-old and a nineteen year-old, but looking at the rest of the team, this could be the Achaeans’ year. 

Ajax has been responsible for more goalie fights than anyone else in the league but his sheer bulk and surprising nimbleness have also helped him to an impressive number of shut-outs. 

=

ACHILLES STEPPING OUT WITH BRISEIS

Hockey’s wild-child, Achilles, has lately been seen around town with Briseis. It’s said that his GM doesn’t approve of the relationship but we here at Puck Drop say that Briseis is just Agamemnon’s type, if he was twenty years younger.

=

“No,” says Achilles (18), winking at the reporter. “I’m not in a serious relationship just yet. Well, I am, but it’s with hockey.” He slings his arm around the player next to him. It’s Patroclus, who’s been playing with Achilles since Achilles was a pre-teen. 

He wears the long-suffering expression of a young man who knows his place. It’s Achilles and Patroclus and not the other way around but Achilles often assures us that he wouldn’t be where he is today without Patroclus.

=

With Priam as GM and Hector and Paris centring their lines, life at the Trojans has been a family affair for many years. Paris’ off-ice behaviour sometimes draws the wrong kind of attention from the media while his older brother is every bit as serious as might be expected from the heir to an empire like the Trojans and one who, we are to believe, was carrying a hockey stick around even before he could walk.

=

“No one will know us here,” Achilles says. It might be true. This city isn’t a hockey city. It’s some kind of heresy that they don’t know Achilles’ name but the clubs’ lights are low and pulsing, like the bass-line, and Achilles and Patroclus grind against each other, sticky-sweet and slick. 

“I love you,” Achilles says in the men’s room, biting it into Patroclus’ skin and Patroclus knows he belongs. 

The beat reporters play up their bromance and their sixth sense on the ice together. They don’t know that Achilles leaves fingertip-bruises embedded against Patroclus’ ribs or that Achilles likes it when Patroclus goes bare, and he doesn’t shower before a game so he can feel Patroclus for as long as possible.

=

The rivalry takes a turn for the worst and can be summarised thusly:  


* Paris is spotted out on the town with the wife of the Achaeans’ GM.
  

* The Achaeans’ GM is shortly spotted having dinner with the girlfriend of his team’s star rookie.
  

* Hector lays a heavy hit on Patroclus and claims afterwards that he’s been dealing with the symptoms of concussion, and believed it was Achilles.
  

* Achilles gets into an off-ice fistfight with Hector, whose career may be threatened by the resultant injuries.
  

* Paris, who has never been a big hitter, slams Achilles into the boards in their next game, which triggers off a line-brawl. 
  

* What happens next is anyone’s guess but most of these kids better hope there’s life after hockey.

=

 

**thetis** @hockeymom500 •1h  
some hockey moms won’t throw down the gloves for their sons. 

 

=

 

Zeus, the Commissioner of the Hockey League, is being urged to intervene. Whether he will, remains to be seen.


End file.
